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Materials

Materials characterization

Projects/Programs

Displaying 51 - 75 of 110
Schematic of approach to clean water membranes

Membranes for Clean Water

Completed
Impact Access to affordable, clean water is vital to the nation's economic growth and security. Polymer-based membrane separation technologies based on reverse osmosis, forward osmosis and nanofiltration will play an increasingly critical role in the production of clean, safe water. In order to...

Metrics for Reactive Wetting in Complex Systems

Completed
From fundamental physical considerations, we have derived a set of partial differential equations describing wetting and spreading. These equations are derived using a variational thermodynamic principle applied to a two-component alloy system with three (vapor, liquid and solid) phases. The method...

Metrologies for Non-linear Materials in Impact Mitigation

Ongoing
Overview This project develops fundamental structure-property measurements on model materials and novel material chemistries from quasi-static to dynamic rates. The goal is to foster a materials by design approach for novel energy dissipation and force re-direction mechanisms. Processing-Structure...
NIST SPHERE

Metrology for Accelerated Laboratory Weathering

Ongoing
Objective To develop and implement measurement science using the NIST Accelerated Weathering Laboratory technology for conducting accurate and traceable aging experiments and service life prediction of resilient infrastructure materials. Technical Idea The integrating sphere-based technology used in...
Photo of the magnetic moment and susceptibility SRMs - platinum cylinder, YIG sphere, Ni sphere, and Ni disk.

Metrology of Magnetic Materials

Ongoing
Currently, the bulk of this project is focused on three main pieces: Thermal MagIC: An SI-Traceable Method for 3D Thermal Magnetic Imaging and Control Magnetic Refrigeration Magnetic Standard Reference Materials (SRMs) Thermal MagIC (MAGnetic Imaging and Control) is focused on developing new...

Microplastic and Nanoplastic Metrology

Ongoing
The Micro and Nanoplastic (MNP) Metrology Project aims to develop a toolbox of methods for size-based separations from complex matrices, chemical characterization protocols, and test materials necessary to enable quantification of micro- and nano-sized plastic particles, a need articulated by our...
A stainless steel micro tensile specimen in a silicon frame.

Microsystems for Harsh Environment Testing

Completed
Classically, measurement of the mechanical properties and reliability of bulk-scale materials is performed with macroscopic specimens and methods. Specimen preparation limitations, miniaturized load-frame tooling problems, and inadequate understanding of the roles of specimen size and constraint on...
MGI-Logo

Modeling Dispersion Rheology for Non-Spherical Particles

Completed
The goal of this MGI project is to establish an interactive database, generated by sophisticated modeling, such as dissipative particle dynamics and smooth particle hydrodynamics, to compute the rheological properties of polymer composites, where interaction among inclusions, inclusion particle...
Moire Systems Susceptibility TDBG

Moiré Systems

Ongoing
Twisted double bilayer graphene The moiré systems of magic angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG) and related heterostructures support topological bands with nonzero Chern number, which is derived from the Berry curvature of the Bloch wave functions. Berry curvature is intimately related to orbital...
Schematic of low-melting point alloy particles (top-left) mixed with a thermoplastic elastomer (top-right) and processed into printable material for fused filament fabrication and pellet extrusion. A filament-based 3D printing setup (lower-left) feeds material through rollers into a heated nozzle, depositing material onto a print bed. A pellet-extrusion setup (lower-right) feeds pellets into a hopper, moves them through a heated barrel, and extrudes through a nozzle onto a bed.

Multifunctional 3D Printable Polymer-Metal Composites

Ongoing
1. Phase-Change Polymer–Metal Composites with Tunable Thermal Conductivity Recent advances in additive manufacturing (AM) have positioned metals and polymers as two key materials. Typically, AM of these two materials involves incompatible methods and conditions. This project addresses that challenge...
Nanocalorimeter Measurements Project

Nanocalorimetry Measurements

Ongoing
Accurate thermodynamic measurements are essential to understand fundamental properties of materials, providing direct and quantifiable insight into the thermodynamics of thin film reactions and phase transitions. Going forward, new classes of materials may only be synthesized as thin films, a scale...
CRAFM_on_Au_cube

Nanoscale Property Measurements by Atomic Force Microscopy

Ongoing
Over the past several decades, Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) has advanced from a technique used primarily for surface topography imaging to one capable of characterizing a range of chemical, mechanical, electrical, and magnetic material properties with nanometer resolution. Such characterizations...

Nature of the Threat

Ongoing
"Improving Particle Collection Efficiency of Sampling Wipes used for Trace Chemical Detection", Gillen, Greg and Lawrence, Jeffrey and Sisco, Edward and Staymates, Matthew E. and Verkouteren, Jennifer and Robinson, Elizabeth L. and Bulk, Alexander, Anal. Methods, 14, 581-587 (2022). http://dx.doi...

NCAL: Data Management

Ongoing
In the mechanical testing and materials science communities there is not a widely accepted solution for data management of test data. As part of NIST efforts on data archiving, provenance, and availability, we have worked to improve our data practices. We have extended our system beyond many out-of...

NCAL: Diffraction Stress Measurement Under Applied Load

Ongoing
Using X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques one can measure the full stress tensor just inside the surface of a sheet metal specimen under applied loading. This permits the measurement of biaxial stress states resulting from directly applied deformation (see NCAL: Multiaxial Material Performance) or...

NCAL: Intermediate Strain Rate Testing

Ongoing
This project seeks to improve servohydraulic testing methods at intermediate strain rates by addressing the well-known problems associated with excessive stress oscillations (ringing) that currently limit our understanding of the mechanical behavior of engineering materials for loading conditions...

NCAL: International Documentary Standards Activities

Ongoing
NIST Center for Automotive Lightweighting (NCAL) staff participate in many different international standards committees (e.g. ISO TC 164, ASTM E28 and D30); however, our main focus has been in the mechanical testing of metals and, to a lesser extent, composites. We work on the calibration and...

NCAL: Materials Testing 2.0

Ongoing
The traditional approach to calibrating material models, known as Materials Testing 1.0, is a time-consuming and costly process that requires multiple experiments to be performed on different types of testing equipment. This not only results in high capital costs for testing machines but also leads...
2 meter diameter horizontal mechanical test machine with control computers

NCAL: Multiaxial Material Performance

Ongoing
Modern metal forming methods are designed and optimized using digital models of specific manufacturing operations. These models rely on a precise understanding of the mechanical behavior of sheet materials as they undergo multiaxial loading out to large plastic strains without failure (necking or...

NCAL: NIST Center for Automotive Lightweighting

Ongoing
The ongoing development of new, advanced lightweight materials presents opportunities for the USA automotive industry to produce better, more reliable and less expensive products provided the new materials can be efficiently manufactured. The use of lightweight materials in automobiles, such as...

NCAL: Quantifying Crystallographic Texture and Phase Fraction

Ongoing
Predicting the deformation and force response of a polycrystalline material with the level of accuracy needed by today’s manufacturers requires knowledge of the aggregate deformation and force response of all the grains in the material. Polycrystalline materials will respond differently depending on...
Tension compresion fixturing with upper and lower loadcells and grips and lateral anti-buckling guides with pneumatic actuators

NCAL: Tension-Compression Testing

Ongoing
The inability to predict the mechanical behavior of new automotive alloys during forming has generated strong demand in industry for more advanced material models and test methods necessary to calibrate them. Industry is particularly interested in modeling the behavior of advanced sheet metals...
EBIC Current

Neuromorphic Device Measurements

Ongoing
One type of device that is emerging as an attractive artificial synapse is the resistive switch, or memristor. These devices, which usually consist of a thin layer of oxide between two electrodes, have conductivity that depends on their history of applied voltage, and thus have highly nonlinear...
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